In the future more people will work for themselves. Startups or solo business. That’s my prediction. I think it’s already in its way — the days of big employers and unions and corporate lifetimes probably peaked in the 1960s.
The restructuring of the way work happens has mostly been a story of complaints from those dispossessed by the changing work arrangements and skill requirements. But on the other side we hear the innovation of small companies and startups as they compete with big companies using information and information technology.
Kind of a neat observation on this is from Paul Graham, saying “you weren’t meant to work in a large organization”. Maybe true. Maybe the brief era since agriculture began is the whole history of people living in rigid authority structures. And maybe the era since societies demilitarized and agriculture automated (less labor input) — starting 100 years ago — was the beginning of the return to small settings.
About following orders, from Paul Graham:
> If you’re not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. And vice versa: when you can do whatever you want, you have more ideas about what to do.
“You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss”
http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html